Alastair(Offline)

Dived the wreck of the Moldavia last friday and I thought I'd just tell everyone a little bit about it.

The Moldavia was a 9,500 ton P&O liner built in 1903. She was converted into a armed merchant crusier in 1915 during WW1. However she was sunk by a U-boat in May 1918 while carrying US troops from to England. She now lies 26 miles out in the English Channel on a gravelly sea-bed in 50 odd metres of water.

Myself, Bob and Gledders had booked onto this dive some time ago and given our recent luck (last 5 trips cancelled) we were somewhat surprised we got a go-ahead. The trip out took two and half hours from Brighton on Nauticat which is a decent sized boat even for 12 technical divers. We had quite a mix on board with the three of us as a DIR team, a few on OC and about half the boat on inspiration rebreathers.

We dropped in and made our way down the shotline. At about 35m the wreck came into view and we followed the shotline down the side of the wreck. The wreck lay on it's port side and was swarming with fish. Bob led off round the wreck as agreed. We started off next to the sea-bed and the base of the wreck and made our way through a few bits of debris. We paused to peer into numerous holes in the ship and spotted an enormous lobster.

We carried on and found a large amount of monofilament line and netting caught over the wreck. At this point Bob spotted a trapped fish caught on the net and moved in to free it. I was behind Bob and watched some of the loose line start to float round his fins so I began gathering it up. Clare signalled Bob and asked him to hold then moved in to help me gather up the line. I tied the line round a chunk of the wreck and Bob freed the fish! It swam off quite happily!

We carried on for a spell before Bob turned us around and we heading back several metres shallower than before. The vis was easily 5m and we could make out large parts of the structure. We came across what appeared to be a break in the wreck and hovered next to it gazing down through various parts of the wreck and upwards towards the starboard rail. We swam into the gap area - it wasn't an overhead environment but there were a few beams overhanging the area. We made our way up to the starboard side of the wreck and swam along peering in some of the empty portholes. I was surprised to see loads of portholes with the glass intact. We then came across a fairly sizeable gun that pointed skywards and we could clearly make out the turret it was mounted on.


Image from Divernet.com showing a photo of the gun

As the current began to pick up we drifted back in the opposite direction along the top of the wreck. A few minutes after that Bob thumbed the dive and we started our ascent.

This was actually the first time myself and Clare had dived with Bob, although we've met him several times. It was remarkably straightforward for the three of us to dive as a team with very little discussion. Really was quite an impressive demonstration of DIR working as it should.

There was a drama when we got back to the surface. One of the other divers had lost his weightbelt on the dive. He managed to tie into the wreck and had slowly winched himself back towards the surface. However he lost his grip at 9m and missed 20 minutes worth of stops . He was fine and quite communicative but the skipper had arranged a chopper as a precaution. We helped the skipper put everything away and assisted other divers getting back on-board. The Helicopter arrived and the diver was winched off in an impressive display of skill by the coastguard.

It's always a worry when something like that happens but the guy seemed to be OK so it all ended well. Overall this was a truly stunning dive in good visibility and good weather. At this time of year that was quite lucky and made this an excellent dive.

Thanks
Al

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Mark Chase(Offline)

Nice write up Al

Just to add the chap was fine he was discharged from hospital at 8pm last nite.

I wont tell you about my solo CCR dive as it was not very DIR :D

Nice day out and great to be on the same boat as dive with Bob Gledders and All from the DIR world.

Bob did try to steel my rebreather to do the dive but i beet him off with a stick.... or did I dream that bit ?

ATB

Mark Chase

Alastair(Offline)

Glad you liked the write up and I'm pleased to hear that the diver involved in the missed stops was OK.

You did miss a discussion between Bob and Howard about learning how to dive an inspiration

Cheers
Al

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jb2cool (Online)

sounds like a nice dive. Once i get rated to a deeper depth i cant wait to start diving 'proper' wrecks.

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Mark Chase(Offline)

Plenty of good wrecks on the south cost in the 30zone. We are blessed with shallow water down here so you have to actually try quite hard to get on a deep wreck.

According to my recent dive log the following are quite good or very good.


Swannage
Kiara 29m

Brighton

City of Waterford 32m
Oceania (a liner and the biggest wreck on the south cost) 25m

Selsea/Littlehampton

Shirala 25m
T Pot wreck 27m
U90 33m

Portsmouth

The Prince Leopold 32m
The Above followed by the Louis in about 18m makes for a two wreck day.

Dover

Loanda 25m (bout No25 in the top 100 wrecks on Divernet)
New Comet 26m
Ramsgarth 29m
The Pomarainian 28 -35m
The Strathclide 29m


All depths are max depth reached on the dive. I logged the Pom at 28 and 35m so it was either very bit and very little tides or a different wreck (this does happen a lot)

The advantage with deeper wrecks is the viz is usually better. The Moll is on a gravel sea bed so its not had less than 5m viz when ever i have dived it however some have reported less.

The above list was taken from my last two years of dives when I have also dived big deep wrecks but i still rated these as good to very good dives. The Prince Leopold stands out as excellent.

ATB

Mark Chase

Tricky(Offline)

You sure you're not getting confused with the Pomeranian that's west of Portland Bill (is that Lyme Bay?)?

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fraser(Offline)

Nah there is a Pom off Dover also. I'm fairly certain the spelling is Pomerania however... but it's just off Folkestone.

Cheers,

Fraser.

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vid(Offline)

a couple of these are on my list of tep 10 UK wrecks, despite being considered "shallow" by mid-channel standards, for instance city of waterford

jb - get yourself on a team/club and go diving, build up your experience and you'll have a lot of fun on wrecks in the 20-30 metre as indicated by mark

vid